[Review] Movie Night, Episode16!
They say, beware of [horror] geeks bearing gifts...
...or in this case, accept the gift with enthusiasm, cos it turned out to be a fantastic one. ^_^ Many thanks to the lovely hellbound_heart for providing the material for this episode of Movie Night, in the form of a film that I'd heard of a few times in the past, but knew nothing about. Quite how, based on a relatively short acquaintance, she managed to size me up as someone who would love this genuine oddity of a movie I'm not certain, but she was, if you'll forgive me a terrible pun here, dead right. *g*
Dellamorte Dellamore (literally "Of death, of love"), apparently better known in the English-speaking world by the painfully unromantic title of Cemetary Man, is a unique fusion of horror, black comedy, philosophical musings and an at times almost painfully beautiful visual aesthetic. It also gets points for its dexterous management of some outright perverted subject material; I've never seen a movie handle the intricacies of necrophilia in a world where the dead return to life - which let's face it, is not a topic for the faint of heart to begin with - with quite such joie de... well, joie de morte, I suppose. *g*
The short summary of the plot is that it's the mental and emotional decline and fall of an introverted, solitary gravedigger-slash-cemetary-warden, Francesco Dellamorte (who doesn't like his name, but only the Francesco bit - he's fine with Dellamorte, apparently), played by a moonlighting Rupert Everett, who works in a graveyard where the dead routinely return from the grave within seven days of their burial. Consequently, while he's an odd duck to say the least, he can at least be credited with having nerves of iron and being a damn good shot with a revolver. Seeking love, he gets himself tangled up with what appear to be three different iterations of the same mysterious woman, to more catastrophic effect at every turn, until eventually his sense of reality breaks down to the point where he goes from killing the dead for a living, to killing the living for... well, it's hard to say exactly what he's doing it for by the end. Thrown in along the way to amuse, delight and perplex the unwary viewer are everything from a woman accidentally getting herself undressed by a skeleton, to a troupe of undead Boy Scouts, to Dellamorte's mentally-handicapped assistant/skivvy/all-purpose Igor figure Gnaghi being engaged to a severed head, to a dead man rising from his grave ON A MOTORBIKE (which by all the gods is one of the single greatest things I have ever seen on celluloid, more enthusing about that below).
I adored this movie, let me state that flat out, and I barely stopped laughing from five minutes in. And yet, one of the strangest things about it is that I can so easily see how I could have hated it. There are plenty of gags in here that skim the very closest bleeding edge of the kind of cringe-comedy that I can't bear, and yet somehow Dellamorte Dellamore carries all of them off with total panache. I'd credit much of this to that wonderful sense of whimsical surrealism that seems to be so prevalent among Italian film-making of a certain stripe; the characters seem as bemused by the situation as the viewer, and there's none of that ham-fisted "nudge, nudge, are you laughing yet?" approach that ruins a lot of mainstream "comedy" movies for me. The humour and the horror both feel like perfectly logical consequences either of the characters' own temperaments or of what seems to be a basic narrative premise that Awesomeness Justifies Occurence. The other thing that makes it work is that the comedy isn't the only point of the film - there's also a slower, more pensive strand running through it that contemplates the nature of life and death and the line between the two, while also sympathetically portraying the oddities and frailties of humanity in all its rich and varied tapestry. While the context of a world where it's normal for the dead to hop up out of their graves might seem odd, there's a deep plausibility to the characters who have to deal with the consequences - you can really believe that the tiny town of Buffalora and all its weird occupants might actually exist at the end of some obscure Italian mountain road, and this is definitely part of the charm.
Then there's the cinematography. If there's one thing Italian cinema does to perfection on a good day it's visuals and camera work, and Dellamorte Dellamore does its country absolutely proud in this regard. There's an almost fairground feel to some of the viewing angles as the camera swings recklessly to point straight up, straight down, through and out of random objects, and generally all over the compass; there's something strangely liberating about the freedom to see what's going on from literally every imaginable angle, adding to the overall vibe of a film that's only loosely pinned to concrete reality. And as for the sets and overall design... honestly, as a longstanding fan of death/undeath-related imagery in all its forms, I really couldn't have asked for much better than this movie delivers. The Buffalora cemetery itself is a triumph, being by daylight a tight-packed maze of characterful tombs and gorgeous old trees and green grass in the sunshine, and after dark a gothic paradise framed in eerie shadows and tiny red votive candle-glasses that glow like haunting eyes in the night. The revenants (I hesitate to call them merely zombies, given that they are sentient and some of them talk) are well designed and have a genuine look of the grave about them, overgrown with ivy and scarred with dirt; no ketchup-based shortcuts here. There are some gorgeously whimsical uses of light and scenery to frame particular sequences - the little will'o'th'wisps, in particular, are adorable.
For me, though, the absolute pinnacle of the whole film in terms of sheer beauty has to be its take on the Grim Reaper/Angel of Death, who manifests out of the charred remains of a burning telephone directory (no, really!) and is literally so gorgeous that I let out a completely unintentional squeak when it (gender unclear, the voice sounds masculine but the subtitles imply possibly feminine) appeared onscreen. Arching, bladed black wings, pure white bone, eerie layered voice effect... absolutely beautiful. Here, see for yourself.. And when it appears again later, wingless in the darkness, suddenly manifesting from what a moment ago was a harmless broken statue... suddenly bone-chillingly terrifying, and still beautiful. Incoherent here, seriously. <3
Which leads me on to my other greatest dropped-drink moment of this film, and that's Claudio, the handsome young biker who is killed in a horrific crash and returns from the dead. Well, more precisely, not Claudio per se, but the exact manner of his return. He was buried with the twisted wreckage of his beloved bike... and then, as Dellamorte and Gnaghi are standing in the graveyard along with the girl who loved Claudio and has come to see if he will rise and tell her whether he loved her or her rival, there comes a sudden cataclysmic RUMBLING. The camera shakes, the characters stumble, the audience wonders what the fuck is going on - and then the ground erupts, and from the depths of the tomb soars, on his bike, the half-destroyed, reanimated figure of Claudio like a literal and figurative bat out of Hell. I actually yelled out loud and threw the horns in complete reflex, that's how blown away I was by that shot. Most metal moment I have ever been completely caught by surprise by. \m/ ^_^ \m/
I'm sure that anyone who likes this film is probably supposed to like it more for its unexpected philosophical depth, but I was honestly so drunk on the sheer beauty and fun of it that I'm probably not doing it justice at all on the deeper levels. I can only apologise for my shallowness, and I honestly would recommend anyone give this movie a chance even if they don't share my own particular fascinations; as indeed if you're not as distracted by the shiny as I am, you'll probably be able to enjoy the deeper levels all the more...
Rating? Oh, go on then - since this has so firmly made itself at home in my heart, I can't justify giving anything less than a 5/5. ^_^ Thanks again, Keri!
Laters,
Rath
...or in this case, accept the gift with enthusiasm, cos it turned out to be a fantastic one. ^_^ Many thanks to the lovely hellbound_heart for providing the material for this episode of Movie Night, in the form of a film that I'd heard of a few times in the past, but knew nothing about. Quite how, based on a relatively short acquaintance, she managed to size me up as someone who would love this genuine oddity of a movie I'm not certain, but she was, if you'll forgive me a terrible pun here, dead right. *g*
Dellamorte Dellamore (literally "Of death, of love"), apparently better known in the English-speaking world by the painfully unromantic title of Cemetary Man, is a unique fusion of horror, black comedy, philosophical musings and an at times almost painfully beautiful visual aesthetic. It also gets points for its dexterous management of some outright perverted subject material; I've never seen a movie handle the intricacies of necrophilia in a world where the dead return to life - which let's face it, is not a topic for the faint of heart to begin with - with quite such joie de... well, joie de morte, I suppose. *g*
The short summary of the plot is that it's the mental and emotional decline and fall of an introverted, solitary gravedigger-slash-cemetary-warden, Francesco Dellamorte (who doesn't like his name, but only the Francesco bit - he's fine with Dellamorte, apparently), played by a moonlighting Rupert Everett, who works in a graveyard where the dead routinely return from the grave within seven days of their burial. Consequently, while he's an odd duck to say the least, he can at least be credited with having nerves of iron and being a damn good shot with a revolver. Seeking love, he gets himself tangled up with what appear to be three different iterations of the same mysterious woman, to more catastrophic effect at every turn, until eventually his sense of reality breaks down to the point where he goes from killing the dead for a living, to killing the living for... well, it's hard to say exactly what he's doing it for by the end. Thrown in along the way to amuse, delight and perplex the unwary viewer are everything from a woman accidentally getting herself undressed by a skeleton, to a troupe of undead Boy Scouts, to Dellamorte's mentally-handicapped assistant/skivvy/all-purpose Igor figure Gnaghi being engaged to a severed head, to a dead man rising from his grave ON A MOTORBIKE (which by all the gods is one of the single greatest things I have ever seen on celluloid, more enthusing about that below).
I adored this movie, let me state that flat out, and I barely stopped laughing from five minutes in. And yet, one of the strangest things about it is that I can so easily see how I could have hated it. There are plenty of gags in here that skim the very closest bleeding edge of the kind of cringe-comedy that I can't bear, and yet somehow Dellamorte Dellamore carries all of them off with total panache. I'd credit much of this to that wonderful sense of whimsical surrealism that seems to be so prevalent among Italian film-making of a certain stripe; the characters seem as bemused by the situation as the viewer, and there's none of that ham-fisted "nudge, nudge, are you laughing yet?" approach that ruins a lot of mainstream "comedy" movies for me. The humour and the horror both feel like perfectly logical consequences either of the characters' own temperaments or of what seems to be a basic narrative premise that Awesomeness Justifies Occurence. The other thing that makes it work is that the comedy isn't the only point of the film - there's also a slower, more pensive strand running through it that contemplates the nature of life and death and the line between the two, while also sympathetically portraying the oddities and frailties of humanity in all its rich and varied tapestry. While the context of a world where it's normal for the dead to hop up out of their graves might seem odd, there's a deep plausibility to the characters who have to deal with the consequences - you can really believe that the tiny town of Buffalora and all its weird occupants might actually exist at the end of some obscure Italian mountain road, and this is definitely part of the charm.
Then there's the cinematography. If there's one thing Italian cinema does to perfection on a good day it's visuals and camera work, and Dellamorte Dellamore does its country absolutely proud in this regard. There's an almost fairground feel to some of the viewing angles as the camera swings recklessly to point straight up, straight down, through and out of random objects, and generally all over the compass; there's something strangely liberating about the freedom to see what's going on from literally every imaginable angle, adding to the overall vibe of a film that's only loosely pinned to concrete reality. And as for the sets and overall design... honestly, as a longstanding fan of death/undeath-related imagery in all its forms, I really couldn't have asked for much better than this movie delivers. The Buffalora cemetery itself is a triumph, being by daylight a tight-packed maze of characterful tombs and gorgeous old trees and green grass in the sunshine, and after dark a gothic paradise framed in eerie shadows and tiny red votive candle-glasses that glow like haunting eyes in the night. The revenants (I hesitate to call them merely zombies, given that they are sentient and some of them talk) are well designed and have a genuine look of the grave about them, overgrown with ivy and scarred with dirt; no ketchup-based shortcuts here. There are some gorgeously whimsical uses of light and scenery to frame particular sequences - the little will'o'th'wisps, in particular, are adorable.
For me, though, the absolute pinnacle of the whole film in terms of sheer beauty has to be its take on the Grim Reaper/Angel of Death, who manifests out of the charred remains of a burning telephone directory (no, really!) and is literally so gorgeous that I let out a completely unintentional squeak when it (gender unclear, the voice sounds masculine but the subtitles imply possibly feminine) appeared onscreen. Arching, bladed black wings, pure white bone, eerie layered voice effect... absolutely beautiful. Here, see for yourself.. And when it appears again later, wingless in the darkness, suddenly manifesting from what a moment ago was a harmless broken statue... suddenly bone-chillingly terrifying, and still beautiful. Incoherent here, seriously. <3
Which leads me on to my other greatest dropped-drink moment of this film, and that's Claudio, the handsome young biker who is killed in a horrific crash and returns from the dead. Well, more precisely, not Claudio per se, but the exact manner of his return. He was buried with the twisted wreckage of his beloved bike... and then, as Dellamorte and Gnaghi are standing in the graveyard along with the girl who loved Claudio and has come to see if he will rise and tell her whether he loved her or her rival, there comes a sudden cataclysmic RUMBLING. The camera shakes, the characters stumble, the audience wonders what the fuck is going on - and then the ground erupts, and from the depths of the tomb soars, on his bike, the half-destroyed, reanimated figure of Claudio like a literal and figurative bat out of Hell. I actually yelled out loud and threw the horns in complete reflex, that's how blown away I was by that shot. Most metal moment I have ever been completely caught by surprise by. \m/ ^_^ \m/
I'm sure that anyone who likes this film is probably supposed to like it more for its unexpected philosophical depth, but I was honestly so drunk on the sheer beauty and fun of it that I'm probably not doing it justice at all on the deeper levels. I can only apologise for my shallowness, and I honestly would recommend anyone give this movie a chance even if they don't share my own particular fascinations; as indeed if you're not as distracted by the shiny as I am, you'll probably be able to enjoy the deeper levels all the more...
Rating? Oh, go on then - since this has so firmly made itself at home in my heart, I can't justify giving anything less than a 5/5. ^_^ Thanks again, Keri!
Laters,
Rath